Why Start A Temp Agency Franchise in the Internet Era?

The Internet Age has brought unprecedented levels of interconnectivity that have changed the nature of life as we know it, in what Hogler et al. (1998) refer to as a paradigm of internet globalization (p. 153). We now turn to our laptops and mobile devices to socialize, order food, book vacations, shop for groceries and gifts, and – you guessed it! – find and fill jobs.

A Step Back in Time – Pre-Internet Employment Strategies

Back in the early 1990s, recruiters had very different approaches to hiring. Generally speaking, the pace of business was slower; technological limitations meant that employers wouldn’t be overwhelmed with resume submissions, and job-seekers couldn’t compile pages of dream-jobs using search tool parameters.

Success depended largely on who recruiters had in their professional Rolodexes, and those looking to start a temp agency franchise needed to be prepared to pursue personal relationships with both sides of the hiring equation. Generally speaking, job-seekers would come to recruiters, or send their resumes using snail-mail or fax machines.

Anonymous (and free!) online classified listings like Craigslist and Backpage planted the seeds of change in the Internet Era. Suddenly, people were able to post job listings on highly-accessible and extremely visible “bulletin boards,” and they responded in droves knowing that their resumes, cover letters, and personal messages were being sent directly to employers’ inboxes.

Online classifieds were quickly adopted by the employers and job-seekers as the wave of the future; fast forward a few years and this model had been advanced, with a narrowed focus on resume shares and employer-employee relations being emphasized by niche companies like Monster.com.

Social Media Sojourn

Today, most of the Monster.com crowd handles their online job filling-and-finding duties via professional social networks like LinkedIn. Though LinkedIn is a clear leader for employment purposes, many job-seekers and employers have turned to more informal platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ to get their jobs or resumes in front of relevant audiences.

As the popularity of online classified and professional social networks peaked, many business owners believed that staffing companies were no longer relevant. Why hire or start a temp agency franchise when the Internet handled all of your networking needs?

Despite the fact that employers and employees were more connected than ever, employment needs continued to go unmet. In this era of unprecedented interconnectivity, employers found themselves completely overwhelmed by the amount of resume submissions that were being sent in response to job postings on classified sites and social media networks,. Worse still, the vast majority of submissions were irrelevant, automated, or sent by unqualified individuals taking a “scattershot” or Hail-Mary approach to hitting their job-seeking goals. This left HR departments and small business owners responsible for sorting through overstuffed inboxes, which placed huge time constraints on companies that were already trying to hire to make up for manpower shortages.

From the other side of the hiring equation, job-seekers began to get discouraged by the daunting statistical challenge they faced – how do you get your resume to stand out when your dream-job employer is being flooded with hundreds of submissions every day?

The Bottomline: Staffing Companies are Needed More Than Ever

Though the nature of our work has changed, our role in the employment equation is more important than ever. Find out more about our industry and read promising value assessments at http://www.atworkfranchise.com.